How Jared Kushner fits into the Russia investigation

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner has become a focus of the Russia investigation. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

The guilty plea and anticipated testimony of disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has led the Russia investigation into new territory, with expectations that it may make a stop at a senior member of the administration en route to the center of the Trump universe.

Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has resurfaced as a focus of the alleged Moscow meddling affair, after he was identified in reports as the "very senior" member of the transition team that Flynn admitted told him to make contact with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

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Information from Flynn, who will face a minimal prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying about those contacts, could illuminate various threads of the investigation that tie to Kushner.

Backchannel effort

Documents on Flynn from Special Counsel Robert Mueller point to an unidentified "very senior" transition official, reported to be Kushner, who told the military man to contact Kislyak about a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

Flynn was also in touch with the Kremlin's envoy over Barack Obama's anti-Russia sanctions for the alleged meddling last December, and met with Sergei Gorkov, the head of a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions, earlier that month along with Kushner.

Kushner has denied reports that he wanted to set up a "backchannel" involving the Russian embassy to communicate with Moscow officials during the transition.

Donald Trump in the White House

It is unclear if the former real estate scion played any role in another alleged backchannel involving Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who denies acting for Team Trump, meeting with Russian officials in the Seychelles during the transition.

Kushner reportedly met with Mueller's office before the Flynn indictment, but it was brief and discussions allegedly centered on the former adviser.

June 2016 meeting

However, Kushner's contact with Russian officials predates the transition period when Trump was already elected.

The renewed focus on President Trump's son-in-law will also include scrutiny of the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, among others.

Kushner was copied on the email chain where Donald Trump Jr. was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton obtained by Moscow prosecutors and attended the meeting, along with Trump Jr. and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Trump, arrives for his plea hearing on Friday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Trump Jr. claims that the meeting focused on other topics, including sanctions, but Manafort may offer testimony to Mueller in his own money laundering case and reveal more details about the discussions.

Kushner told Congressional investigators that he did not read the emails offering the Clinton dirt and that he did not understand the topics of the meeting.

WikiLeaks

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It is Kushner's connection to another set of Trump Jr.'s messages that has most recently drawn the eyes of investigators.

Kushner was among the recipients of his brother-in-law's emails about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reaching out to him, in hopes of coordination as his transparency website released Clinton campaign emails believed to have been hacked by Russian intelligence.

He had originally denied any contact with WikiLeaks in his meeting with Congress, but has had to clarify that he did receive Trump Jr.'s notes about Assange.

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Kushner's lawyer Abbe Lowell last month saying that the emails, which Kushner reportedly forwarded to other people, were missing from the documents that he had handed over as part of the investigation.

Incomplete Disclosures

Kushner's proximity to the center of the investigation has become clearer after a previous omission from official documents was corrected.

The adviser was required to submit a list of his foreign contacts in order to get security clearance to work on sensitive national security issues in the White House, but this list was incomplete.

Updates to those disclosures were made this summer and ultimately helped reveal the existence of the Veselnitskaya meeting, which is seen as the strongest evidence of potential collusion efforts.

Prosecution is possible but unlikely for the misfiled forms, which joined Kushner's omissions of millions in assets from financial forms about his holdings.

While meetings with Russian officials have received the most attention, the targeting of Kushner in the meddling probe deals at least in part with his sprawling business dealings, according to the Washington Post.